among which his lot is cast." And yet, we are told, this is what will come of being transformed into an angel! We ought to speak very plainly of these things. I take my own case. My father was a Calvinist of the hardest type; he died when I was very young, but I can remember enough of him to make me long to meet him again. I believe he would have risked his life to save me from misery. He has been in heaven now for some twenty years; and does any man mean to tell me that under the sweet ripening influences of heaven, that kind heart has so changed that if I am damned for denying all he believed, he will look on unmoved, and that, to use Mr. Spurgeon's words, when I look on his longed-for face, I shall only see his cold lips moving with the solemn curse?" Do you mean to tell me that that is what heaven has done for my good father? Then I shall be glad to be banished from heaven, from the heaven that kills human love, from the heaven that turns beating hearts to stone, from the heaven that has turned my father into a fiend.

I want to know how you are going to explain away all that. I want to know how you are going to account for this ghastly unconcern of the angels, and this wicked selfishness of heaven? For if this doctrine be true, all are changed. God is changed, for He loves, and pities, and forgives no more. Christ is changed, for he no longer yearns over the miserable and despairing, and cares no longer to seek and save that which is lost. The sweet and holy souls of earth who found all their delight in doing good are changed; and our own dear friends who would have laid down their lives for us here, are changed, and changed for the worse! I want to know how you are going to account for it, so as to save heaven and the angels from eternal infamy and shame! A great Calvinist once did try to explain it, and this is what he said:-" God will, in mercy, extinguish the susceptibilities of the saved." In other words,-God will take away the bright love out of the mother's heart for her poor lost child, and will take out of the father's heart all care for his damned and despairing child. In other words, again, he will take from us the only things that now sanctify and bless our lives. O my God! great and gracious One, whom Jesus taught me to call my Father"-help me never, never again to believe it! Help me to think of Thy dear redeemed children as making the Universe radiant with Thy love, and as spending eternity in redeeming it from every trace of misery and sin.

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They tell me that I shall be lost for this faith,-they with their Calvinism, with their God-dishonouring and man-darkening Confession of Faith, they tell me I shall be lost, because I will not believe that which crushes my heart, smites my reason,

and robs me of my just and loving God. Be it so. I am ready for my fate. It is no disgrace for a man to be lost, if he has done his best. The only disgrace is in being willing to win salvation at any price. I also desire to find my way to heaven, but there is one price I will not pay even for that, I will not sacrifice my reason, my conscience, and my humanity ;—and, that I may become an angel, I will not be content to become a fiend.

But I fear not the result. Already I seem to see the golden light of the beautiful spirit-world; already I seem to hear the music that fills its happy skies; already I seem to catch a glimpse of the glorious hosts whose unceasing delight it is to help some fallen spirit to rise. O, let me but come to your sweet companionship; make me an hired servant of the humblest messenger of mercy: let me only have the reward of "going on," then my heaven will be complete in the hope that, one day, hell itself will be conquered, and that a redeemed and purified humanity will fill and hallow the universe of our Father, Friend, and King.

NOTES AND GLEANINGS.

THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.

If there is any body of men who might reasonably be expected to be conspicuously free from prejudice, ever ready to welcome new discoveries, to give a fair hearing to new facts and the discussion of their issues, that body should be the Royal Society of England, instituted for "improving human knowledge." This body would seem of all others the fittest tribunal to which Mr. Crookes could submit his recent experimental investigations, and the "New Force," the existence of which he considers these investigations have established. Well, last summer, Mr. Crookes sent in a paper to the Royal Society detailing his investigations into what he considered to be a new force. This paper was returned to him, but as its rejection. seemed to be the act of the Secretary rather than of the Council of the Society, Mr. Crookes sent in a second paper, most carefully stating his experiments, without entering into any speculations as to the origin of the phenomena he had demonstrated. As remarked by a contemporary, "No experiments made under such stringent conditions had ever before been submitted to the Royal Society, the care having actually been taken to add the testimony of scientific witnesses-a course not

usually supposed to be necessary." This paper was submitted to the Council of the Royal Society, and has been officially and unanimously rejected. History will surely record with regret that a Society which has done such eminent service in the advancement of knowledge, should in this instance, by its own act have brought upon itself deserved discredit in refusing to entertain the consideration of phenomena which for nearly a quarter of a century have arrested public attention throughout the world, and which certainly are deeply significant, whatever view we take of their nature and origin. It cannot be pleaded on behalf of the Royal Society that Mr. Crookes comes before it unaccredited by scientific position and attainments, for we may fairly presume that it was from their sense of his eminent fitness in these respects that they did him the unusual honour of electing him a Fellow at his first nomination, when there were only fifteen Fellows to be elected out of fifty candidates. The rejection of a paper on a subject of such grave importance, by one so well qualified to deal with it,-a paper so carefully prepared, detailing a series of experiments conducted with the utmost caution, and verified by witnesses whose competence is above suspicion, is a humiliation of science by a body which is its most conspicuous representative. But this act of the Royal Society is only the latest of a long list of illustrations that might be cited to show that it is not to learned bodies, and men of great reputation that we must look for the advancement of new and unpopular truths, which have to win public acceptance not only without their aid, and in the face of their neglect, but too often in spite of their opposition.

AN AMERICAN JOURNAL ON PSYCHIC FORCE."

It is possible, if not probable, that Professor Crookes and his associates may have contributed to science a permanent discovery in his recent experiments with Mr. Home as a medium. It certainly has never been clearly demonstrated what is the force or element used by the will when the hand is controlled to write or strike by an individual. Voluntary actions are merely registered as one class of motions, and involuntary as another, and the moving element used as an instrnment in the former has never been clearly defined. Experiments have fully proved that it is not electricity nor magnetism, which in their natural and abstract condition are not subject to the will. That there is an element or force which is subject to the human will is also quite certain, and it may be properly termed psychic force, as the will pertains to the soul, and this element may be used by the soul while in the body to regulate its motions, and,

for aught we know, in some instances by souls when free from their bodies to control the bodies of susceptible persons whom we call mediums. There is often evidence of partial control by a foreign intelligence, and sometimes a blending of this with the mind of the medium, in which there is a mixture and comparison of ideas and actions. The element is evidently not intelligent, but is wholly or partially controlled by intelligence from some source. The professor evidently does not wait to admit the control of any foreign intelligence, while we have the best evidence of such control; but we are not certain that he has not hit upon the element that the soul of each person uses to control its own body, as well as that of others in the case of mediumship. Science is surely feeling her way along toward spiritual ground, and will ere long fairly plant her standard on the spiritual shore, and take observations from that point; and the Psychic Force may be the chain that will enable her to measure over the gulf of death, which has heretofore been her barrier to further discoveries.-Banner of Light.

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MANIFESTATIONS IN HYDE PARK HOTEL.

Mrs. Berry has a suite of apartments in the above hotel, and has had a cabinet constructed for the purpose of obtaining spirit manifestations in her own rooms. This cabinet is just sufficiently large for two persons to be seated in, and is enclosed by two gates, secured by a slip bolt, and a stout iron bar fastened by a padlock, of which at these séances Mrs. Berry keeps the key. Between these gates and a pair of outer doors is a space of seventeen inches, and in each of these doors is an aperture six inches in diameter, with a curtain inside to shut out the light. Candles are placed for the light to fall full upon these apertures, through which, when the spirits have drawn aside the curtain, hands are shown; in the evening to which we are about to refer not only full-formed hands but baby hands were thus shown. Articles placed in the cabinet, or taken by the occult agency from the rooms, or from outside the house, whence is sometimes wholly unknown, are thrown out or handed to those present. But a manifestation of a still more remarkable kind occurred on the evening of Wednesday, January 24th. The mediums, Messrs. Herne and Williams, were in the cabinet, which was bolted, barred, and padlocked, as described. After other manifestations had occurred of the kind indicated, the mediums were thrown through the doors, or, as Mrs. Berry expressed it to us, came rolling out; the gates, it was found on examination, remaining fastened and the iron bar undisturbed, the key of the padlock still in Mrs. Berry's pocket. On entering the adjoining room,

the heavy couch, with other articles of furniture were found turned over on the floor, without injury to them, and so noiselessly that the movements had not been heard. On the following Wednesday evening the spirits showed their power by smashing the cabinet. The seat was torn down, the gates knocked to pieces, the iron bar was bent nearly double, and the hinge which fastened it to the gate broken across. How these things were done, like many other things, is a mystery. We give the account as we had it from the lips of Mrs. Berry, and from the Rev. G. C. D., a clergyman of the Church of England, who witnessed these things. We have seen the wreck of the cabinet and the bent iron bar and broken hinge. We think it would have been impossible for the mediums to have bent the bar as we saw it, even had they been free and outside the cabinet, instead of prisoners locked up within it.

A LADY CARRIED AWAY BY SPIRITS.-WRITING ON THE SKIN. Dr. H. Clifford Smith writes:

On Saturday, 17th February, I went to the rooms of Messrs. Herne and Williams, 61, Lamb's Conduit-street. Eight persons were present. Having taken our seats, Mr. Williams closed the folding doors, leaving the gas burning brightly in the front room. He locked the doors, and handed the key to a lady who was present, and took his seat.

Two minutes could not have elapsed before I felt the passage of some drapery overhead, and directly afterwards all exclaimed that some person was on the table, and various conjectures were made as to who it could be. A light was obtained, when I, who was nearest to her face, recognised her as Miss Lottie Fowler. She was in a deep trance. The pulse, however, which I felt immediately, was full, but rapid and fluttering, as a person's under the influence of great excitement. Afterward this subsided, and became gradually weak and feeble, but rapid, as in a person in an extreme state of exhaustion.

During her trance, she was frequently influenced by a spirit, "Anne," who spoke distinctly in her own characteristic way, and endeavoured to describe the manner in which she was brought. She stated that her medium would sleep and remain in the trance condition until half-past eight, but that we were to continue sitting and wait for further manifestations. It would take me too long to enter into all the interesting particulars of the séance, or of the conversation held with "Anne." Suffice it to say that Miss Fowler with some difficulty recovered consciousness at half-past eight precisely. The time, which I carefully noted, when she was so suddenly brought into our midst was a quarterpast seven.

Miss Fowler when she awoke from her trance became greatly excitedwould not credit what had happened. When she was come sufficiently to herself she gave the same account which the spirit "Annie" had previously given to the effect that she had left her home in Keppel Street, Russell Square, at seven o'clock, proceeded to the corner of Tottenham Court Road, and there entered an omnibus going up Oxford Street, as she was on her way to Mrs. Gregory's. She felt sick, but that was all she could call to memory; she knew nothing more after that until her return to consciousness in our midst.

During her entrancement the spirit stated that Messrs. Herne and Williams were about to have a new development of mediumship, and that they would each have a name written on their hands during the evening. When a